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Comment by simonh | Hacker News Reader

Sorry but that quote has convinced me not to read the rest. It’s absurd. Firstly no we don’t just assume beavers made dams, we don’t need to because we’ve found plenty of ancient remains of beaver dams. We know beavers and dam construction behaviour evolved at some point and want to know when and how that happened, so we look for evidence linking the two. If we just made blind assumptions it would not be possible to figure out the developmental timeline.

Secondly the development of evolved instinctive behaviour is in no way comparable to human learned cultural behaviour, such as technology. That should be so obvious I’m at a loss that I have to even point it out.

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Isn't the point that our ability to learn and develop cultural behaviour is pretty much instinctive? Of course humans everywhere did things recreationally, it seems part of what it is to be human.

Fair enough, however I’m not making a point about the origin of the behaviour, but how the behaviour manifests. Cultural behaviour can change very rapidly, and propagate through a population in significantly less than a generation, whereas instinctive behaviour takes many, many generations to develop and propagate. It’s not reasonable to equate the way they develop and propagate as being the same simply because they are both behaviour, and anyone who suggests they can clearly isn’t a credible source on the subject.

I also noticed this was a thing that bothered them:

> Along the way to the site, a forgettable visitor’s center greeted me with animations and music evoking primitiveness. Such art is a window into our modern shared subconscious rather than into the culture of a people who erected buildings 11,500 years ago.

I discovered it’s more of a political website, not one typically about archeology, and it made more sense in that context. They seem to have a chip on their shoulder about the perception of older cultures. Which also explains the opening about Turkey’s development.

That said it’s a good read and later on has some interesting history on the development of archeology.

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